back to article HP: you know we said we were done with cost cutting...

Just when the folk at HP Enterprise Services thought the multi-year cost cutting timetable was almost at an end, along comes another plan to lop $2bn off the expenses bill. The division reported a 16 per cent drop in turnover to $4.81bn in HP’s second quarter of fiscal ’15 ended 30 April, although profit before tax went up 31 …

  1. All names Taken
    Paris Hilton

    Hasn't HP ...

    ... got a lot of ex-civil service workers TUPE'd into itself?

    1. x 7

      Re: Hasn't HP ...

      yep, a lot of DWP staff moved across to HP/EDS -eg Norcross and Peel Park at Blackpool, and another site at Lytham. But most of those staff have gone, with both Norcross and the Lytham site buldozed.

      To be honest, the way HP/EDS fucked up the DWP contracts they deserve to go bust

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Having been through three rounds of these, this is how it works:

    - Some Dilbert manager in the US decides costs must be cut, therefore a certain number of jobs must go across the organisation

    - The fact that HP Enterprise Services is contractually obliged to have X bums on seats in order to work for the UK Ministry of Defence doesn't come into it

    - The fact that HP Enterprise Services received millions of pounds of money from the Scottish Government to create a certain number of jobs in Erskine which are then in jeopardy doesn't come into it

    - People leave

    - There aren't enough people with Security Clearance who are prepared to work 12 miles west of Glasgow, seeing as they live in Reading, Slough, and Watford

    - Fly in contractors on £350 a day from Heathrow every Monday morning

    Staff churn was 28% when I was there.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Having been through three rounds of these, this is how it works:

      "The fact that HP Enterprise Services is contractually obliged to have X bums on seats in order to work for the UK Ministry of Defence doesn't come into it"

      HP have got around this by hiring hundreds if not thousands of contractors to replace all the permies they have culled, and as you say, each of them are earning in excess of £350 a day.

      And these contractors do not count in the official HP figures on employment, so HP can trumpet to their shareholders that they've culled 48000 employees when in truth they have hired thousands of contractors paying them 3 or 4 times as much as the permies were earning.

      I work for HP but plan on leaving very soon as I;m sick of the way experienced staff are being gotten rid of and replaced by people with no experience at all.

      There will soon be no experienced support staff to actually maintain HP's government contracts - it is a disaster waiting to happen

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Reductio ad absurbum

    Will Meg Whitman know how to run a data centre when she's the only one left?

    1. PeteA
      Pint

      Re: Reductio ad absurbum

      Given her inability to organise a p***-up in a brewery, I doubt it. It's been so sad watching a once-great company decline at what seems to be an exponential rate.

    2. Mpeler
      Mushroom

      Re: Reductio ad absurbum

      "Will Meg Whitman know how to run a data centre when she's the only one left?"

      She doesn't even know how to run a stocking, let alone anything else - in particular data centres.

      Non-techie at the head of one of the (sadly, formerly) most techie companies out there.

      This will not end well.

      RIP Bill and Dave.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Reductio ad absurbum

      "Will Meg Whitman know how to run a data centre when she's the only one left?"

      She won't need to know - her plan is to automate the running of data centres...

  4. David Roberts

    Loads of fancy speak about pyramids and stuff.

    All it really says is we are going to fire the experienced but expensive staff and hire inexperienced but cheap staff.

    This must fill the remaining customers with pride and a deep abiding joy.

    How long before all of EDS have been let go?

    Along with all their contracts?

    Take overs rarely increase profits and reduce overheads.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Take overs rarely increase profits and reduce overheads."

      "Take overs rarely increase profits and reduce overheads."

      Hush your mouth, or the poor dears at the M+A side of the City will all be out of jobs, and then where would we all be?

    2. Stoneshop
      Holmes

      Nothing new under the Sun, err, Alpha.

      All it really says is we are going to fire the experienced but expensive staff and hire inexperienced but cheap staff.

      Wrong tense.

      s/are going/have for the past decade been firing, and will continue/

  5. BogMonster

    Somebody at HP should Google "You can't cut your way to profit" and do some reading.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      And deep down they know this...

      HP ES' problem is that they have traditionally been set up to handle the so-called mega-deals, which are now few and far between. They have known the world is changing for some time and have said they need to win a larger number of smaller deals (wow, insightful eh). However the organisation hasn't really changed to enable this to happen; it's still a big, lumbering beast instead of being something more agile and nimble.

      Time will tell what happens...With falling revenue you cannot cut your way to profit and remain the same size, and perhaps that's the key - maybe they cut some more and become a smaller but more profitable organisation.

      1. Vic

        maybe they cut some more and become a smaller but more profitable organisation

        Or maybe they cut some more and become a smaller but less profitable organisation...

        Vic.

  6. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    Number one HP product going strong

    Abandoned buildings, that is. The campus they built for Palm is quite nice. Hopefully the next ones are not in Silicon Valley - there are way too many empty office buildings here.

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